


Let me care for you

by Hinalilly



Series: Hina's Cheesy Rinharu Week Oneshots [3]
Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, Reunion, Rinharu Week, Single Parents, Universe Alteration, letters that were for you, you could've called
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 16:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2658050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinalilly/pseuds/Hinalilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unsent stack of letters reminds Haruka of the things he still has a chance to cherish in his life.</p>
<p>(In which Rin left without a word and never came back, so the boys never formed the swim club and went on to lead more ordinary lives.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let me care for you

**Author's Note:**

> Hina's "all these prompts are all great so let's write fics that use them all at once" Rinharu Week adventure continues! (And it apparently gets a different name each day, too)
> 
> Super self-indulgent fic here, since it's based on an AU that I never got around to writing (many thanks and apologies to [Lucy](http://empressrevealed.tumblr.com) and [Echo](http://echocave.tumblr.com) who did their time discussing it with me waaaay back when; I wonder if you guys even remember it?), which I did my best to condense and adapt so it would make sense ~~apologies in advance for the sudden exposition bits~~. I probably could've taken an easier route, but as soon as I saw the prompts I knew I wanted to try and write this one bit of it. I hope you like it!

 

“Ah… a—choo!”

In spite of all his promises and earlier tough act, Rin sneezed loudly. Haruka was glad that he had refused to listen when Rin had stated he was well enough to hold the soup bowl himself, and that it was instead still sitting safely on his lap, its contents unspilled. While he had promised himself he wouldn’t stay very long, Haruka had been unable to ignore the state Rin was currently in. It was a slightly depressing and admittedly rather funny sight to behold: he was sitting up in bed, red-faced and with tired-looking eyes, shoulders hunched beneath a thick blanket, his hair tousled and sticky with sweat, and sniffling uncomfortably behind a flu-mask that looked like it had seen better days. Haruka sighed loudly, momentarily setting the soup bowl on the bedside table to grab a tissue and, after ignoring both Rin’s soft, nasal apology and his outstretched hand, he pulled the flu-mask down and wiped Rin’s nose himself.

“Haru, what the hell—I can do that,” was Rin’s barely intelligible argument as he tried to shake Haruka off. Haruka, again, paid him no mind, holding the tissue firmly against Rin’s nose.

“Blow,” he ordered, and Rin made a loud, disgruntled noise before relenting, doing as he was told. He then followed the tissue with his eyes, looking thoroughly disgusted as Haruka discarded it, and pulled the blanket closer around himself with a huff.

This was a situation Haruka wouldn’t have imagined himself in a few months back.

That had been a less than pleasant period of his life, swamped with work and research and spending long hours away from home, and being at his wit’s end as to how to deal with the increasingly worrying issue that circled around running out of places where to have his daughter taken care of in his absence.

Sakura reminded Haru of himself in a lot of ways, but that didn't mean she was an easy child to deal with. She was quiet and reserved, and generally stayed out of trouble, but she wasn't the best at socializing with others, choosing instead to keep to herself and her drawings. Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem, and Haruka himself hadn’t seen it as much, but Sakura had a tendency to suddenly react aggressively, sometimes even violently, to the repeated insistence of the other children or the caretakers for her to join in the daycare’s activities. She never raised her voice or screamed or cried, but she could pull other children’s hair with a lot of strength, and she’d once bitten a boy’s arm when he’d snatched her sketchbook away from her (Haruka remember how, after their reunion months later, Rin had barked with laughter when he’d shared the incident with him, saying that the kid probably deserved it, and had then urged Haruka to treat Sakura to some ice-cream later on his behalf). Fewer and fewer places had begun accepting her, and for a single-father with a full-shift, with his closest friends living at least one train ride away each, and nobody to rely on at home for help, Haruka had found himself dangerously close to the breaking point. He’d never imagined that Rin, of all people, the kid who he’d known for barely two months in his childhood and who had left him behind without a word, feeling utterly betrayed and abandoned, would step back into his life with the answer to his predicament.

“Oi,” Rin grumbled, staring at Haruka, who seemed to have frozen mid-motion, the spoon still hovering in front of Rin's face even after he'd already sipped the soup on it, “what are you spacing out for?”

Haruka stared back for a moment, overlapping the image of the young, energetic Rin in his memory with the sickly, flu-infested Rin sitting in front of him right now. “Nothing,” he mumbled, scooping up more soup and bringing it up for Rin to lean in and drink it.

Their meeting had occurred by sheer coincidence, too. When he had finally gathered the courage to—or rather, had been driven enough into a corner to share his problem with Makoto, who (after an approximately half a minute-long moment of indignation over Haruka's prolonged silence on the matter) had offered to do whatever he could to help, Haruka had never imagined that it would all eventually lead to him currently being at Rin’s small apartment, sitting on his bed, spoon-feeding him soup and helping him blow his runny nose.

“This sucks,” Rin whined, sniffling again and burrowing further into his blanket. Haruka frowned a little, staring at the bowl in his hands. True, the soup had been made the previous night (Haruka rarely had time to cook lately, but he was making an effort), but at that time, Sakura had said it was tasty. It had been her who had shyly hinted for Haruka to take some over to Rin a few long hours earlier, making sure to shove her brightly-colored, handmade “get well soon” card into her father’s hands to go with it before she had been dropped off at Makoto’s for the day (she might not have inherited his swimming skills, but Sakura was already leaps and bounds ahead of where Haruka had been at her age when it came to drawing). Haruka wasn’t about to ignore his daughter’s wish, so he made sure to scoop up a healthy spoonful of soup, and shoved it in Rin’s direction.

“Eat up,” he said, firm, practically pushing the spoon against Rin’s lips, who drank it up without complaint, “You can barely taste it, anyway.”

“… that’s the problem,” Rin mumbled, hugging his knees a bit closer to his chest and hiding his face from Haruka inside his blanket cocoon.

Makoto had always been good with kids, and after graduation that hadn’t changed. His path and Haruka’s had led them in very different directions, and soon they’d moved into opposite sides of the town, Makoto still working with teaching and taking care of children, and Haruka on a half-heartedly chosen career path as a marine biologist and illustrator (he'd long since given up on swimming; Rin had taken all the charm and solace that the water could offer with him when he'd left). They’d kept in contact fairly regularly (though Haruka had a bad habit of keeping his troubles to himself until last minute, like when Makoto had found out about Haruka’s arranged engagement only a mere week before the wedding, or how he’d heard about Haruka’s late wife’s pregnancy practically at the very moment when she had gone into labor), and the thought of asking Makoto for help with watching Sakura had always been in the back of Haruka’s mind.

(Makoto had a bad habit of his own: constantly trying to bring up the topic of Rin, which was why Haruka always dreaded engaging in any sort of conversation with him that went further than discussing the weekly weather forecast or other equally trivial topics.)

Doubtlessly, Haruka would’ve turned to Makoto first should they have still lived a few steps away from each other’s houses, but the physical distance between them was hard to shorten, especially with Haruka’s long hours at work and the time it would take for him to cross the entire town to pick his daughter up. But upon finally finding out about the extent of Haruka’s worries, Makoto had immediately promised it was no trouble for him to wait with Sakura until Haruka could make it there, assuring him that the rest of the staff wouldn’t mind covering for him every now and then, either. Indeed, Haruka had felt at ease leaving Sakura in the care of Makoto and the people he trusted enough to work with, even if he did feel guilty when he had to keep her waiting one or usually two hours for him, never knowing what to say to wash the frown off her face, nor how to get her to talk to him a little about how this new daycare center was turning out for her. Even if she was his own child, it had always been hard for Haruka to communicate with her, and he always ended up watching her from afar instead, working and putting her to bed and then working some more, and the silent wait for the day when he’d inevitably get a call asking him to please find another place for her had become common practice lately. At least, after accepting Makoto’s offer, Haruka had known he could trust him to call first thing should anything even remotely bad happen.

But a few weeks had passed and nothing had seemed out of the ordinary, save perhaps for Sakura’s strange mood change. She had seemed to be unnaturally eager, almost happy, even, to be taken to the daycare center (something she’d hated since the very first day Haruka had dropped her off at one), and it was upon pure chance that Haruka had managed to bring himself to ask about it right on the very day she had finished a drawing of the “nice caretaker” that worked at Makoto’s place.

Even after noticing, with a small tilt of his head, the bright red crayon that filled the lines of those long bangs and that messy ponytail his daughter had immortalized on paper, Haruka had never, ever, expected Rin to be that guy.

(It wasn’t until much later that Haruka found out that all those hints that he had refused to pick up from his phone calls with Makoto were precisely about how Rin had specifically asked him not to tell Haruka he was working part-time there, always going out of his was to avoid crossing paths with him, and if not for Haruka’s curiosity over who this red-headed caretaker that his daughter seemed to be so fond of was, they might have never crossed paths again.)

Rin sneezed again and, in his distraction, this time Haruka wasn’t fast enough to wipe his nose himself.

“Ugh,” Rin groaned as he threw the used tissue towards the paper bin (and missed). “Just kill me,” he whined, trying to lay back down in bed, but immediately sitting up again when his nose got blocked up in mere seconds.

“I’ll get you some water,” Haruka said a little absent mindedly, getting up slowly to take the now empty soup bowl to the sink.

“Water can’t help me, Haru,” Rin whined again, keeping the blanket as close to himself as he could while he tried to hold back another sneeze (and failed).

“You need to stay hydrated,” was Haruka’s reply, already halfway to the kitchen, and he could hear Rin’s loud groan (followed by a short coughing fit) when he, apparently, missed the paper bin again.

For all his complaining, Rin was a rather compliant patient, and he gave Haruka less trouble than he had expected. Haruka couldn’t stay much longer, considering he’d only made enough time to stop by, but he at least wanted to make certain that Rin was comfortable enough before he left. With that thought in mind, he consciously made some time to fetch Rin’s medicine along with the water, kept his eyes on him as he swallowed it, and made sure to tuck Rin in carefully before heading over to the closet to fetch another blanket.

“You’re not that bad at this,” Rin had teased sleepily towards Haruka’s back, and Haruka knew he wasn’t lying. Making sure she was comfortable in bed and watching over her while she slept was the one thing Haruka had been able to do consistently for Sakura all these years, so he did have some experience with that. That didn’t mean the comment hadn’t surprised him, though. It must have been the fever.

Rin rarely gave Haruka compliments on his parenting skills; he usually stuck to being brutally honesty about Haruka’s mistakes, giving him advice that was either impossible, incredibly difficult to follow, or that Haruka had already tried and failed at. He was always going on about how Haruka needed to stop buying takeout and cook at home some more (for some reason or another, one that Haruka supposed was likely a personal vendetta against that particular dish, apparently grilling mackerel didn’t count). He constantly chided Haruka on his lateness, telling him to forfeit giving those the lectures that Haruka already didn’t like very much from the get-go and instead focus on finding a way to carry out some of his work from home. He kept saying how Haruka couldn’t keep expecting Sakura to just tell him things, and that he had to ask her himself instead, show interest in her (Haruka argued that he did, he did show interest, but Rin didn’t seem to think Haruka’s silent approach was good enough). Haruka hated to admit it more often than not, but even without any children of his own, Rin was right about many things, and while Haruka certainly didn’t lack the will to make things better, it wasn’t as easy as he made it sound. Not to mention, having to constantly waver between being relieved to see Rin so earnestly invested in Sakura’s well-being, and being frustrated and almost jealous that he was probably a hundred times a better and more prominent father figure for her than Haruka himself was didn’t make things any easier on him.

It didn’t help that Haruka always had the nagging worry in the back of his mind that one day Rin would leave without a word again, either.

Haruka still hadn’t forgiven him for that one time so many years ago.

And he definitely didn’t want Sakura to have to go through that pain, too.

Rin didn’t have many extra blankets in his closet, but since winter was already over (Haruka wasn’t surprised that even the weather seemed to confirm how much of an idiot Rin was) Haruka had to rummage quite a bit through it, and the piles of clothes Rin owned, to find what he was looking for.

It was only when he’d finally managed to pull the blanket out with some difficulty that Haruka noticed the tiny box hidden in the corner of the closet. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve left it alone, but the lid had come off while tugging, and Haruka could clearly see a piece of paper that had his name scribbled on it placed inside it.

The apartment was quiet, so Haruka guessed Rin had fallen asleep.

Besides, the paper had _his_ name on it. Haruka had every right to look.

Haruka dropped the blanket on the floor, sitting beside it with the box on his hands, and picked up the paper, which turned out to be an air mail envelope, in order to examine it.

It immediately caught Haruka’s attention that the envelope right under the one he’d picked up had his name written on it also. And the next one under that one as well. And the next. And the next.

It didn’t take him long to figure out that the entire box was filled with a stack of envelopes bearing his name and address.

Haruka curiously opened the one in his hand, and he wasn’t surprised to find a letter inside it. It was dated years ago, around when they were still twelve, shortly after Rin had left without a trace, and in it was what was probably meant to be a short apology, but which had dragged on for an entire page until it was cut short abruptly. The style of the letter changed suddenly after that, turning into a retelling which went over all the wonders of the foreign country Rin had written it from. The second letter wasn’t too different from the first, dated a week later, with a slightly shorter apology and a longer section on all the cool parts of Rin’s trip, along with his carefully detailed plans and his hopes for the future.

Rin had written letters for Haruka at least weekly, and from what Haruka could skim from them, the content was mostly the same throughout them all. Rin apologized at least once per letter, so Haruka guessed he had ultimately been too embarrassed to send any of them out—maybe after a few weeks, Rin had thought it was already too late, that Haruka wouldn’t care for nor would want to hear, much less accept, an apology from him (Haruka had certainly felt that way back then, and even reading into Rin’s heart and the reasons for his actions after so long did little to keep that bitterness from resurfacing). But as he went through more and more envelopes, Haruka saw how Rin gradually talked less and less about how wonderful everything was, and instead there were more and more lines about the many hardships he was facing, about how hard he was trying and how he had no intention of giving up. There were moments when Haruka could picture Rin’s proud smile just the way he remembered it, but as he kept reading, as the letters got progressively worse, some of them bearing big chunks of scratched out words, erased text, and what seemed like tear marks, it became harder and harder for Haruka to imagine the expression Rin must have been wearing as he wrote. It was almost painful, and Haruka didn’t want to dwell on it—the mere thought of imagining tears flowing from the adorable face that Haruka had recorded in his memories from so long ago was too much to bear. Rin had ultimately failed to achieve his dream in Australia, and his pride had been much too hurt for him to be able to say anything, much less to face Haruka, about it, when he had no accomplishments to justify neither his sudden leave nor his long absence. Most of the letters seemed to have been written solely to be left unsent, and, while Haruka could understand why Rin hadn’t mentioned anything (Haruka himself rarely brought up the topic at all, bitter as he still was about it), he still wished that there had been some way in which he could have heard about what had happened much sooner. Maybe that would've helped him get rid of that nagging worry that was always present in his mind. Maybe that way he would finally be able to fully accept Rin's return without question.

The last letter in the box immediately stood out from the rest, snapping Haruka’s attention away from his thoughts of what could have been and bringing him back to reality again. It wasn’t an air mail envelope like all the others, and the calligraphy on it was slightly different, as well, harsher, less childish. The envelope was still addressed to him, though, so Haruka opened it without much thought.

It was dated about a month after Sakura was born—about a month after Haruka’s wife had passed away.

The letter opened with another apology, and Haruka almost stopped reading right then and there, if not for the rough style and the short insult that immediately followed after it (accompanied by a few empty-sounding threats to punch Haruka on sight for not attempting to contact him and share his problems with him before, and Haruka almost snorted). He would’ve definitely stopped reading if it had been nothing but Rin giving him his condolences. While his marriage hadn’t been something Haruka had sought out on his own, and while he couldn’t say he had had any chance to come to love his wife at all, with the little time they’d spent together and the little effort Haruka had put into it, it was still a moment of his life that he wasn’t particularly eager to relive.

But that wasn’t it.

Rin was saying sorry for not having the courage to write sooner (and yet this apology had gone unsent, as well). He was saying sorry for being too much of a coward to stay away all those years, even after returning to Japan, even after hearing about his marriage ( _especially_ after hearing about his marriage). Rin was saying sorry for being unable to bring himself to be by his side after all this time, but how he still cared, how he still wanted to be there for him, how he wanted to listen to Haruka’s worries, how he, even when he didn’t think he could, wanted to become the person Haruka could rely on, how he wished things had been different, how he wished he hadn’t wasted all that time, how he wished he’d somehow been able to go back and do everything over just so he could spare him the pain, how, even after all those years, he still—

Haruka could vividly picture Rin groaning, clicking his tongue, mumbling a “this is stupid,” and shoving the paper into the envelope in frustration.

The letter ended abruptly after that.

No matter how many times Haruka turned the paper over or checked the envelope for more pages, the rest of Rin’s thoughts at the time remained a blank.

Haruka sat in silence, the letter still in his hands. He could probably wait until Rin himself was ready to tell him to talk properly about the rest, about the past, about the things that had gone wrong and all the time that had gone to waste, but ...

( _I still_... what?)

Haruka was still really bad at communicating, but Rin had done so much for him since they’d met again, and Haruka had suddenly come to realize that he hadn’t said anything about it. (He hadn’t said anything about anything, really—did Rin even know how the deep the wound he’d left in Haruka’s heart actually had been?) Nothing changed the fact that Rin was too demanding, too bossy, expected Haruka to make too many big changes too quickly as if it was all so _easy_ , that he had a short-temper and tended to rush into things, that he turned everything into a competition and frankly just being around him made Haruka feel so much more tired than usual, but... Haruka could tell. Something had definitely changed. Not so much in Rin (though he, too, had definitely changed, grown, become a bigger and better person than Haruka had ever given him credit for—or perhaps he hadn’t really changed, and Haruka was just beginning to notice, to admit these little things now, after all this time), but more in Haruka himself. As annoying as Rin was, as much as he pushed Haruka around and as much as he made Haruka feel like walking away and never speaking to him again from time to time with his nagging and his bragging, as much as he made Haruka jealous of the instant, effortless connection he’d made with Sakura within just a few days of meeting her, Haruka did feel like he wasn't so lost anymore. He _did_ feel like he had changed for the better, if only a little bit. Like he could become a good enough father for Sakura, eventually, with Rin there to keep him on his toes, to keep pushing him forward.

( _I still_... could it be?)

There would probably be a lot of hardships along the way, but Haruka knew that, as insufferable as he could be from time to time, he wanted Rin to be there. He could keep changing, he could keep becoming a better version of himself, as long as he had Rin as his signpost to guide him forward, to light up the way.

(Yes. Definitely.)

 

Rin was indeed asleep when Haruka returned to place the extra blanket on the bed, but he stirred awake slightly afterwards, just as Haruka was making a bit of order around the room before finally going on his way. He seemed disoriented for a brief moment, rubbing his eyes at least twice after spotting Haruka, and even after registering his presence in the room, Rin didn’t seem to believe Haruka was actually there until he sat beside him on the bed again.

“Haru… ?” he asked groggily, bringing a hand up from beneath the sheets to push the hair off his forehead, and Haruka could swear he could see the cogs beginning to turn slowly behind his glassy-looking eyes. “… you’re still here.”

Instead of replying, Haruka busied himself with pushing the bangs sticking to Rin’s face away, wiping the sweat on his forehead away with his sleeve.

“You should’ve told me,” he began, pausing upon noticing the confused look on Rin’s eyes, and fixed up his hair a bit more, deciding to leave the conversation for later. “Don’t just wait for me to find out you’re not fine. Let me know.”

Rin snorted, coughing a little right after, and smiled at Haruka, pulling the forgotten flu-mask over his mouth again. “Taking my words to heart, huh?” he teased, and Haruka could still see the grin on his face even with the mask in the way again. “ _Fi_ _—_ _ne_. I’ll call you next time. Happy?”

Haruka stopped working on Rin’s hair for a moment, sitting up straight and looking away, taking in the sight of the apartment, the paper bin full of snot-filled tissues, the empty glass and the rest of the pills on the bedside table.

He thought of Sakura waiting for him to pick her up, maybe wondering if Haruka had did as she had asked, maybe jealous that he’d gotten to see Rin today. He thought of maybe going over to fetch her, taking her back home, cooking up a quick dinner and tucking her in to sleep, and how he’d inevitably wish to check up on Rin again.

Haruka couldn’t even fathom the thought of leaving his daughter alone at home. But, now that he’d seen the state he was in, he also didn’t want to leave Rin, either.

He wished he didn’t have to go, but he knew exactly what Rin would say if he did as much as doubt.

He just wished there was some way in which he didn’t have to leave either of them alone.

Maybe—

“—you could,” Haruka thought out loud, staring at the bunch of sports magazines scattered on Rin’s desk, “come stay with us.”

“Huh?” Rin blinked, trying to sit up slightly with a grimace.

“I mean,” Haruka turned his gaze back to him, who still looked pretty miserable in his pajamas and his unruly, sweat-drenched hair, wrapped under way too many blankets and with that rumpled flu-mask on his face, “it would be easier for both of us. Sakura wouldn’t be alone at home. And I could take care of you.”

“Who says you have to take care of me?” Rin laughed again, laying back in bed and pulling the covers around himself again, doing his best to hold back another cough. “If anything, I’d be taking care of you guys. You're hopeless.”

“Yeah,” Haruka said, and Rin almost coughed and choked in the same breath, “you're right.”

Rin was wide-eyed as Haruka stood, fixing the blankets around him again and picking up the two balls of tissue that had missed their mark earlier to throw them in the paper bin. If Rin didn’t usually compliment Haruka on his parenting skills, it was equally rare for Haruka to agree with him on anything.

“Haru—” Rin spoke just as Haruka was starting to leave, and Haruka had to squint to make out his expression, with how high he had pulled the mask over his face. “I—look, I don’t want Sakura to catch a cold too, so I think—I mean, I can’t—”

“That’s okay,” Haruka interrupted quickly from his spot in front of the door, opening it slowly, “you can come stay with us after you get better.”

He didn’t stay to hear a reply, closing the door a little nervously behind himself, and leaning on it briefly for support, just in case. But after a few moments of being unable to get his heart to slow down even a little, Haruka couldn’t help the smile that found its way onto his face.

It was definitely stupid, he thought, silently agreeing with the Rin in his imagination. But Haruka was willing to take that risk.

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case anyone was wondering: they say only fools catch colds in summer, hence why Haru makes that comment about the weather confirming that Rin is an idiot.
> 
> More random trivia: Sakura was born in April. You can guess how Haru got the inspiration for her name (oh Haru).


End file.
